Don't ask me how I got into that conversation, I don't remember. I looked the young woman in the eye, and without condemnation (John 8:11) gently said to her 'That's because you want to do it'. She lifted her hand not quite quick enough to hide her “guilty as charged” smile.
I heard it said one time that if a man (not the ladies of course) wants to do something he will find a 1,000 reasons to do it. If on the other hand, he does not want to do the very same thing, he will find 1,000 reasons not to do it. Its called rationalization.
We live in a society that denies that there are absolutes, no real right and wrong, no certainties. We are told “All truth is relative, there is nothing that is always true at all times and in all places, there are no absolutes.” Well if there is even one absolute, then the statement is false. Largo commenting on an earlier post put it this way “There are no absolutes. Are you sure? yes. Are you absolutely sure?”. The point is that if this statement is true, it would be an absolute. So if it were true, it would be false! So it can't be true ( Reductio ad absurdum).
On top of this, from a practical point of view, we cannot live consistently with this “truth” (all truth is relative). The wife of the man with whom the young woman wanted to commit adultery, would likely affirm unequivocally that adultery is wrong. If someone breaks into you house and steals your treasure, you will likely not want the judge to let him off because “Stealing is not wrong at all times and in all places”. What about murder or rape or child abuse? Are these okay sometimes?
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This is tangential to your point, but can you advise me on the contemporary (with Moses) meaning of the word translated as "adultery", in comparison to the meaning of the word "adultery" as used today?
ReplyDeleteAmong other things, I don't know if the ancient use was "symmetric" wrt to the sexes, as it today. I understand that the term would have applied to David and Bathsheba in their circumstances. If neither were married, it would not apply to either. I am not sure that it would apply had Bathsheba not been married, even if David was.
I have been led to think that there was something unlawful about the use of a woman who was under the care of her husband (to put it delicately) -- one that went beyond the sexual impropriety of fornication.
Assuming polygyny as a norm (simultaneous marriages each involving a common man -- not a single marriage involving more than two partners), this leads to a result at odds with today's use. To say of David's committing adultery his wife (or wives), that it turns on the question of Bathsheba being married or not, seems odd. The conclusion seems to be that David's adultery was a transgression against Bathsheba's husband alone. (All transgressions are against God, if nits be entertained.)
Now polygyny is not the Biblical (creational) norm, but neither was it a sin (in terms of the decalogue). The end result for me now is this: that situations which we would today call an act of adultery against a spouse (e.g. a married man sleeping with his unmarried secretary) have close ancient parallels which would not be called adulterous.
Now if the ancient term was symmetrically used, none of this follows. And: I might well have been misled about the lack of symmetry. And: in any case, this does not excuse the actions of the married man sleeping with his secretary. But if the term adultery meant something different then than it does now, I want to understand truly what God is saying, to us, at this point in the decalogue.
* * *
This may be a red herring, but in contemporary use, I sense that the term "adultery" is used frequently in the context of a man betraying his wife with some significant other, but gives ground to the term "cheat" in other contexts -- as in cases of a one-off hookup with a prostitute, or even (though less pronounced) in cases where such hookups are ongoing but isolated.
I sense as well that in the latter cases, there is less a sense of threat to the heart of a marriage. Eve may be hurt to learn that Adam employs an occasional hooker when on his quarterly business trips overseas. But she would me more likely to consider (or fear!) divorce if he was seeing prostitutes in town every weekend, or intimate with his secretary for the past year (worse), or intimate with her sister for the past year (worse still, but not just the story of soap opera).
It may then be that the true (decalogical) meaning of adultery has to do not with the sexual act per se (although this is a paragon of adulterous behavior) but with acts that work to undermine the marriage. This would explain why David's multiple wives did not amount to adultery, and why his sleeping with Bathsheba did not threaten the hearts of the marriages he had (when a wife has to share her husband with others, it matters little whether the husband is married to some particular other or not), but did threaten the heart of the marriage between Bathsheba and her husband.
If this is so, then so called "open marriages" today, for all that they may violate biblical norms, even gravely so: to the extent that neither spouse feels threatened by the behavior of the other, it is not in violation of the commandment to not commit adultery. It may be objectionable, at least on the grounds of fornication (better multiple marriages than burning with lust for many others?) but fornication is a less serious matter (even granting that all sins are serious).
I'll make a final (brief) comment which is a propos, although it does not really involve (I would argue) questions of adultery.
ReplyDeleteTo be the husband of (at most) one wife is a good thing. For the church to demand of its members that they refrain from entering into multiple marriages may be a good thing. But the practice of requiring a man to forsake all but one of the wives he may already have (or a woman her husbands I suppose) seems to me a great evil. This is not an issue in North America, but it is an issue elsewhere.
(God once said "I hate divorce". I suspect he still does. (And this may be why we find adultery as a *major* biblical topic.))
The New Testament scriptures to which you make an oblique reference are II Timothy 3:3,12. The context is Paul outlining qualifications for church leaders. As such it does not require
ReplyDelete“a man to forsake all but one of the wives he may already have”. The interpretation of the phrase is disputed. Some (I think wrongly) say that it prohibits a divorced person from being a Church leader. Since the Greek for man and husband is the same word (as is the word for woman and wife), the phrase can be literally (and meaningfully) translated as a “one woman man”. Since the marriage relationship is intended to be a picture of Christ and the Church is it (perhaps) more than fitting that leaders be required to aspire to this ideal.
I am not an expert in Biblical Hebrew (nor for that matter in Biblical Greek, but I know a little Greek – he runs a restaurant on Water Street!).
"Little Greek" -- groan!
ReplyDelete(You also know a little oblique. He lives in Hong Kong.)
(Language is funny, isn't it? You can make that joke with the New Testament, but not the Old Testament.)
I can see a case for limiting certain church leadership roles -- some of the more public leadership roles -- for reasons to do with weaknesses in the cultural context, within or without the community. I don't know whether I would agree in any particular context (or any context at all), but I see a case.
If I would scandalize the unbelieving community to be a high profile church leader with my two wives, then I would prefer a back-bench role.
What leaves me aghast is the thought that most (or at least half) of the wives should find themselves "left out in the cold" in some form or another (meaning far more than receiving ongoing food and shelter), especially at the encouragement of the church. Widows and orphans come to mind.
--
On a lighter note. You said you know a little Greek with a restaurant on Water Street? Well, I know a guy named Walter, who runs a little restaurant just off of Pine Ridge Creek.
On a lighter note: You said you know a little Greek with a restaurant on Water Street? I know a guy who runs a little restaurant just off of Pine Ridge Creek. His name's Walter.
(You don't think I'm going to blithely allow your (ongoing) quest to create the world's worst pun go unchallenged, do you?!)